Posted on by Lydia Ink

The White Narcissus

I remember.

The white petals, the slender pale green stem swaying in the winter cold wind.  A moment with narcissus and the child, who was oblivious of the circumstances.  

The demurring and pitying smiles of ladies-in-waiting, the whispered trill of laughter as they danced down the tall, stone, halls–she loves narcissus, she loves the narcissus flowers–well she should, well she should, as she weds the living, breathing freezing man himself.

I’ll wed in April.  I’ll wed when the dew is like diamonds upon the white of narcissus, its deep red heart like the beating of mine.

I exist to please the eye, they said in whispers, and that is all.  

My pale, tall groom, so stoic and waiting–I remember being a young girl and not knowing.

I wed in June as all brides do–I longed for the cool of April.  He stood so tall, so austere as in my dreams, my white knight.  He stood tall and without a smile or glance of kindness.   

The monk took a pitying glance at the roses in my grip.  The heavy blooms trembled in my numb hands.  The holy man mumbled, regarding the pallor of my face. My knight frowned in response. 

I was out of my tall tower to be given to the man who waits.   I dread the night.  I dread the knight.

No food touches my lips, no wine for my stomach’s sake.  The supplications of kinder women that I knew–take, they said, take, and the coldness of his touch might lessen tonight.

No.

He held out his arm that I may touch but not lean.  I stay within my austere body, not weeping for those few who cared for me.

If I had seen a measure of kindness, if the blackness of his frown lightened or the pale, thin lips had softened into a slight smile in private.  No, only a mask of a man handsome to some to me a prison.

Narcissus, narcissus, I heard the girls sing–and now knew their meaning.  My future was written in my taste in flowers, only I could love the cold and winter blast, only I could survive the frosty blast. 

We walked beneath the high-vaulted ceilings hung in tapestry and glory.  His voice alone now mine to hear, deep and austere “I have secured the borders of this lofty tower and your beauty and your fairness are now mine to ponder.”

I bowed my head and sealed my lips refusing to look at a man who viewed me as a prize and perhaps, yes perhaps worthy in feature to be called his bride.

Narcissus, narcissus, I hear the girls clatter.

“You think me shallow, I see the outside of my wife–not at all, not at all my dove, I see both inside and out–you are lovely, a fair spring flower…”

The narcissus I remember and let the tears slide.  No sorrow, or compassion, no tender touch–he waits and so I pull within myself the grief that has escaped.

To the tall tower, our bedchamber now, in a daze and docile I go.  The air seems light and the June evening at last cool; the lights are low and the rose petals upon the floor, upon the cushions, and upon the bed glow.  He seems well satisfied;  he seems content, and at the pinnacle of satisfaction looks about and his eyes light upon me.

But to the edge, I have crept while his mind took stock of all that is now his.  A moment of hate flashes across his face and a word of denial screamed, slashing like a sword’s edge from his mouth –

Too late, too late and it is I who smile as the cobblestones below I embrace for comfort–a moment’s pain and years of release.

Narcissus, narcissus they whisper not jeering, narcissus, narcissus they scatter in the cold freezing spring as I sweep along the cobblestones, leaving a tinkling, icy laughter.

I glide upon the stair during the winter’s interminable night.  I wait, I wait;  my hand now cold and white.  His grip on marriage slipped. He dreads the spring, with all the force of a dying man upon the dying earth.

A madness sears his once handsome face. The narcissus blooms in fields every frigid April–a reminder I wait.

Posted on by Lydia Ink

Can I Blame My Nature?

It wasn’t my fault.  I know that it is petty, but it’s true–it wasn’t my fault.

He was an awkwardly splendid man.   I couldn’t call him shy, there may have been hesitation in him but not shyness.  He was tall and broad-shouldered.  He looked very proud of his Harley-Davidson motorcycle.  I for one dislike motorcycles, in my mind motorcycles are dangers. I had no temptation to ask for “a ride.”  However, I admired how he straddled the machine and I had wild ideas regarding him in a physical sense. Ideas which pretty young things run to the confessional regarding;  I don’t confess.

Yes, I looked at him.  Yes, I stopped to look at him.  No, I didn’t tell him to go away and yes; he knew how to shake hands with a woman in a way that was open and honest.  Irresistible.

Did he work at being open and honest?  Well, with me, I hope he had to work at it.  I hope he wanted to take my hand, pull me forward and wrap those big, fine, powerful arms around me and kiss me until my knees went weak.  

It still wasn’t my fault.  I did not play coy; I looked him in the eye and did my best to just keep walking whenever he happened past me.

I think men demand too much; I understand their need, and I understand the chase, but enough is enough.  A pity I didn’t walk away.  

Heaven above help me. Those narrow hips, those soft denim shirts and clean smell.  The tight t-shirts were a turnoff.  Total vanity.  Total.  When I saw the tight t-shirt, I could turn off the heart palpitations, and he didn’t get it.  He could sense it too–and I could sense his confusion.  The “what,” expression on a man is like a salient mark on a treasure map.

“Turn right at Mount Everest, you can’t miss it.”  That’s the “what,” expression on a man.  What?  Don’t you like it?  Do you know how I’ve worked for these arms, this chest, and hey, I’m not a youthful man!  On and on the “what,” expressions go.

So you can see, it wasn’t my fault.  I wasn’t out to distract him.  I wasn’t out to gain his attention.  I found him attractive, sure, but I didn’t flash my eyes at him and beg him to chase me down.  I’m just not that kind of… person.

Do you know a spider won’t eat its prey unless said prey is alive?

That’s how spider webs work, you know.  Invisibility and then trapped.  Spider webs work because so much of life doesn’t believe in death; especially their own.

He’s strong, he still twitches now and then, but it won’t be long until I must ignore another one and build yet another web.

Posted on by Lydia Ink

Missing Shakespeare

“Let slip the dogs of war.”

He heard it first in a Star Trek movie years ago–he couldn’t remember which one.  Stirring his coffee and decided he couldn’t remember which Shakespeare play the quote was from either.  He knew whenever he thought of that quote now; he thought of his ex-wife.

He thought of her often. When that wriggling little black mass of gooey memory started forward he took the dog out and tossed the ball until they were both exhausted.  He worried because old Fido (his actual name) didn’t want to run and play fetch as often or as long as they used to.  That was a problem because lately that mentioned black mass of destruction was surfacing more often.

He knew why his second marriage was failing.  He married her on a whim.  She was there; he was there, a need met, and he thought he might as well continue meeting that need.  It was fine for the first six or seven months until she decided she was in love.

He dressed appropriately, was even happy on the day of the nuptials but now…

Now his coffee was stale and overcooked and the nice neat-as-a-pin house he lived in had a thin layer of dust dulling the sparkle he remembered.

His second wife couldn’t cook and that was fine, it was just the two of them and he enjoyed cooking.  She enjoyed reading and at first that was fine.  They enjoyed walking downtown to the used bookstore, he would walk away with an edition of Sir Walter Scott he couldn’t believe he had the good luck to find and she would walk away with a bag of paperbacks.

At first it was fun.  She tried everything on him–everything.  He even flipped through her books once but when he came across some descriptive parts of the male anatomy, he thought he’d leave it up to her.

The marriage was about a year old when he found himself wide-awake beside her.  She was softly sleeping while he puzzled about life throughout the night.  What scene had they played out, what plagiarism in bed did they perpetrate?

That’s when the face of his first wife drifted in front of him and he sat bolt upright.  What if he slipped, what if he got so caught up in the current rush of love making but uttered in ecstasy his first wife’s name?

His first wife read Shakespeare and used to quote long segments at a time.  She read and reread the plays.  She looked so lovely during the festivals they attended.  They were young, inexperienced and let slip away the teachings of commitment.

He didn’t mourn her memory but her memory of Shakespeare. The taunts, the jibes, the certain bawdy humor and a sense of a night walk with ghosts and skulls and the best of ill luck. The slap and suck of sweat dimmed quickly in comparison.

He stirred his coffee and watched the dust motes on the windowpane.

Posted on by Lydia Ink

The Beautiful

I saw her in the obituaries a couple days ago–and now her funeral is just across the street, in a stately Catholic church, but I won’t go.

She was beautiful when she was young, according to the tastes of the crowds; I found her loud.  I will confess, her photograph on the electronic obituary held only a memory of her beauty when I knew her.  I suppose her real beauty was on a George Orwell sort of scale; the fleeting beauty of youth hanging soggy laundry in the ghetto side of town.  Then marriage, children, a thickening waist — so become lumps.

Sometimes the beautiful don’t do well with the lump stage of life.

She wore the short skirt of a cheerleader on Friday. She was invited to all the parties on Saturday and went to Mass on Sundays. Her hair was always perfect.

I remember her parents, how proud they seemed of how fine she looked cheering the football team on in those chilly October nights.  They stood close to the cheerleaders, passing them hot cocoa and smiling back at friends who sat close together under blankets looking safe from the cold of autumn and the promise of winter. 

She was a hairdresser at her own upscale salon that she and her friends started. I was a walk in. I wanted a cut, something different. She didn’t recognize me from our high school days. Why remember a wall flower? After shampooing my hair she asked,”How do you want me to cut it?”

“I’m looking for something different.”

She pursed her lips and looked out the window. Friday night was beginning to glow outside the large window. “Right. Well I need some direction okay.”

“You in a hurry?”

She looked at my reflection in the mirror. She narrowed her eyes and tapped the sharp little scissors on the edge of my chair. I paid her for the shampoo and didn’t tip her. I went home and cut my own hair. No hard feelings, sincerely.

Her obituary stated she was survived by her fur baby, Hank.

Posted on by Lydia Ink

Musical Chairs

I wish I could cry when I had time to cry. Crying at inappropriate moments seems to be my bailiwick in ripe middle-age. Driving up to the teller window at the bank is not an appropriate to cry. My mouth opens to speak and then suddenly cracks around a sudden onslaught of tears. That’s humiliating. Some poor young girl, who can wear tight fitting tops and look good in too much silver, tries to either ignore me or be overtly kind; either reaction adds to my weeping fit. All the while my mind calm and cool is pacing out sentences such as, ‘just what the hell is the matter with you?’

The solution? I go home, shut the door, ignore the loud party the neighbors are throwing in the apartment below me and tell myself to cry. Cry to your heart’s content. Nothing.

I often wonder what it would be like to take on a lover again. When I was young, making love was so simple, I would just pretend he was someone else and the climax was spectacular. Admittedly, the afterglow was decidedly flat.

I have always been a realist. I understood then as I do now that if you choose a lover for the effect, then one must be ready for the reality of non-committal after glow. In short, one-night stands (all I was interested in) didn’t know how to act after love. He either smoked, paced the floor, hands shaking, worried about his wife, or he went for a glass of water and fell asleep on the couch. There are other stories, all of them just as boring.

Taking on a lover now may be interesting. I don’t have the strength to lie anymore, so what would brutal, honest love making be like? Would I cry? If so, one of two things would happen. He would put his pants on backward trying to get away from me or make me tea and pat my head. Either way, the circumstances remind me of the bank teller in the tight top and too much silver, and I know I’d laugh like a bitch. Men don’t understand laughter.

Love without the dogged-dread of commitment is like losing at musical chairs. I remember only once playing musical chairs as a child. I don’t suppose that’s played in the western world anymore–all of our political correctness not allowing anyone to standalone, cast out, moved over to the side. Now we all just stand on one side of the room or the other, and no music plays at all. Safer anyway, I suppose, like allowing the lover to spend the night on one’s couch and feel relief when he’s not there in the morning.

So there I sit in my apartment, a party down below and me allowing myself to cry and feeling noncommittal. I think about turning on my computer and watching a French film and I think about making myself an omelet and I think about adopting a cat. Nothing. But tomorrow when I’m sitting at my job and thinking about what I did the evening before, I’ll want to weep at how pathetic I must have appeared to no one there, yet feel relief that no one is there.

So rather than think, I walk to the bar and drink sticky sweet sherry because I can’t think of what to order and watch the band play songs they don’t know. I see a face I pass during the day and he nods my way, too bored or too shy to come say hello or too relieved to be in a crowd alone. This, I think, is how post modernist love making was born; no musical chairs, no mistakes, no crime and no tears.